OUR TRAINERS & COACHES

Assets for Artists is thrilled to work with a wide range of stellar artists from New England and beyond to deliver professional training and coaching to creatives in our region. All of our trainers and coaches are practicing artists with deep experience in their respective fields, so they understand the unique challenges you face.

We are always interested in expanding our training and coaching offerings. If you live in New England, have considerable training in your field, and a proposal for us to consider, please reach out!

aaron meyers

Aaron Meyers (he/him) is a seasoned international non-profit leader, dance artist educator, and creative entrepreneur who's passionate about building communities through arts & culture on a global scale.  He brings to the Assets for Artists program 16+ years of progressive leadership experience at United Way Worldwide, where he led the International Network Team, and decades of studying, performing, and teaching dance forms like Breaking, Capoeira Angola, and Locking.  In addition to serving as the interim Executive Director for the dance services organization Boston Dance Alliance, Aaron is the Co-Founder of the creative venture A Trike Called Funk, a mobile & musical marketing vehicle that provides creative advertising for sponsoring organizations and paid gig opportunities for local artists.  Aaron is also a leading member of the Boston-based dance crew Beantown Lockers and an ambassador for the international Hip Hop diplomacy program Next Level for which he has designed & led dance academies in Abu Dhabi and Rio de Janeiro.

Coaching Areas: Creative Entrepreneurship | Strategy & Operations | Fundraising/Sales | People Leadership | Global Initiatives.

akeem Davis

Akeem Davis is a Barrymore Award-winning actor, registered tax preparer at Philadelphia Tax Prep for Artists, and non-profit administrator with the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, a death penalty sentencing resource center. Alongside theater, he has always held a passion for numbers and financial accounting. He is profoundly inspired by the opportunity to be an advocate for other artists through nuanced and effective tax preparation. Akeem is a man of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. and a proud alumnus of Norland Middle School of Miami, Florida.

Workshop Offerings: “Understanding An Artist’s Personal Finances”

ALICIA GOODWIN

Jeweler Alicia Goodwin has been selling work through her Etsy shop Lingua Nigra for 17 years and her own online shop for almost just as long. It wasn’t until she was earning her degree at The State University of New York Fashion Institute of Technology that she realized that creating impactful work in metal was her true calling. After close to two decades of living in New York City and working for many talented small designers as well as larger jewelry brands, she returned to her hometown of Chicago, IL, where she makes and sells her own work full time. Her jewelry has been displayed and sold at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, The National Ornamental Metal Museum in Tennessee and has been featured in Essence, Vogue and on Good Morning America.

Coaching Areas: Online sales | Etsy | Wholesale

Allison Maria Rodriguez

Allison Maria Rodriguez is a first-generation Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist working predominately in video installation. She creates immersive experiential spaces that challenge conventional ways of knowing and understanding the world. Her work focuses extensively on climate change, species extinction and the interconnectivity of existence. Rodriguez’s work has been exhibited internationally and throughout the country, including at the Boston Center for the Arts, the Fitchburg Art Museum and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in MA, and Smack Mellon in NY. In 2019 she was honored by WBUR’s The ARTery as one of “The ARTery 25”, a celebration of 25 millennials of color impacting Boston’s arts and culture scene.

Coaching Areas: Creative entrepreneurship | Video/installation art

Allison Cole

Allison Cole is an award-winning illustrator, artist and surface designer who never stops creating. Over the past nineteen years, she has worked with a wide variety of clients that span many different industries, including stationery, wall art, giftware, apparel, home furnishings and bolt fabric. She teaches illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and has taught at Montserrat College of Art and Massachusetts College of Art & Design.

Workshop Offerings: “The Art of Licensing”

Coaching Areas: Licensing for 2D work / surface design

Amy Smith

Amy Smith is an educator, facilitator, and dance and theater artist. She co-founded and (for 26 years) co-directed and performed with Headlong Dance Theater, a Bessie-award winning Philadelphia-based dance theater company. Also a certified tax preparer for artists, she has a strong commitment to helping artists improve their financial literacy. She teaches financial well-being workshops and courses with Creative Capital, Assets for Artists, Center for Cultural Innovation, Sundance Institute, at many colleges and universities, and for the awardees of several national awards and fellowships.

Workshop Offerings:

• “The Nuts & Bolts of Being a Performing Artist”

• “Financial Strategies for Artists”

• “Taxes for Artists”

• “Financial Well-Being Through Interdependence”

Coaching Areas: Artist finances | Taxes | Business strategy & planning for performing artists | Equity and collaboration

Ana 'Masacote' Tinajero

Ana 'Masacote' Tinajero is an award-winning Afro-Latin dance artist and performing arts curator who loves engineering spaces for community connection through the arts. She has spread the salsa bug to more than 30 countries and is the founder of Dance to Power, an online Afro-Latin dance academy. Through her social impact initiatives, Ana advocates for LGBTQ inclusivity and gender and racial equity in the arts. She holds a BS in Management Science from MIT. Recent awards include: 2022 MCC Artist Fellow, 2020 Kennedy Citizens Fellow, 2019 WBUR Artery 25.

Workshop Offerings:

• “Resource Mapping for Individual Artists”

• ”Project Management 101”

Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez

Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based somewhere in between Borikén and the traditional homelands of the Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples. For the past 20+ years they have been a curator and gallery director both in the nonprofit and commercial sector. They additionally have been a grant panelist, judge, guest lecturer, and portfolio reviewer for various institutions such as the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston Foundation, RISD Museum, University of California Berkeley, Leica Camera USA, and at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in San Juan to name a few. They currently are faculty at the Roger Williams University, Arts Administrator for AgirtArte, and are part of the board of directors at the Dirt Palace Public Projects in Providence, RI.

Workshop Offerings: “Portfolio Power / The Artist Portfolio”

Coaching Areas: Artist portfolios | Careers in fine art

Andrew simonet

Andrew Simonet is writer and choreographer in Philadelphia. From 1993 to 2013, he co-directed Headlong Dance Theater, creating dances like CELL (a journey for one audience member guided by your cell phone), and This Town is a Mystery (dances by four Philadelphia families in their homes). Andrew left Headlong to focus on writing fiction. His debut novel, Wilder, was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2018; his second novel, A Night Twice as Long, was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2021. In 2006, Andrew founded Artists U, an incubator for helping artists make sustainable lives. Through workshops, convenings, and one-on-one planning sessions, he has worked directly with over 5,000 artists across all disciplines. His book Making Your Life as an Artist, an open source guide to living as an artist, has been downloaded by 200,000 artists worldwide and is used as a textbook in dozens of university and graduate arts programs.

Workshop Offerings: Artists U cohort program

Coaching Areas: Careers in writing

ASHLEY ELIZA WILLIAMS

Ashley Eliza Williams is a painter, sculptor, and interdisciplinary artist making work about interspecies communication and non-human language. She has exhibited widely including at Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (CO), Hersbruck Museum (Germany), The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder (CO), and Wasserman Projects in Detroit (MI). Recent fellowships and residencies include Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Shoals Marine Laboratory, and Shangyuan Art Museum (China). Williams loves working alongside and collaborating with scientists. In 2023 she was a resident artist fellow at The University of Virginia Mountain Lake Biological Station. She teaches drawing and art foundations at Smith College. 

Coaching areas: Building a visual art career | Artist residencies | Portfolio feedback | Exhibiting your work

BEVERLY ARMY WILLIAMS

Beverly Army Williams is a writer, textile artist, and writing teacher at Westfield State University, where she develops and teaches courses in Composition, Creative Writing, and Grant Writing. As a grant writer, she has authored and co-authored winning proposals at all funding levels. Her creative writing has appeared in The Whale Road Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Dandelion Review among other places. She recently had a solo show of her textile project Grimm, Abstracted at Thimble Gallery in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Beverly holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico. She lives in the woods of Connecticut where she hikes daily.

Workshop Offerings:

• “The Brass Tacks of Grant Writing”

Chanel Thervil

Chanel Thervil is a Haitian American artist and educator obsessed with all things art, community, and history. Fueled by her lack of satisfaction with the narrow range of representations of people of color on both sides of the canvas, Chanel decided to pursue a career in art. She's been making a splash in Boston via her educational collaborations, public art, and residencies with institutions like The Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Children's Museum, and The Harvard Ed Portal. Her work has been featured by PBS Kids, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Bay State Banner,WBUR's ARTery, and Hyperallergic. She holds a Master’s in Art Education from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design, and is herself a 2020 alum of A4A’s artist residency, the Studios at MASS MoCA.

Coaching Areas: Careers in visual art | Public art

Chelsea gaia

Chelsea Gaia (she/her) is the founder of Green Bird & Co., a PR & Business Strategy Firm specializing in branding, brand recovery, and small business growth. Over 20 years Chelsea utilized and honed her passion for community, entrepreneurship skills, and marketing savvy to help revitalize the small business district on Main Street in her hometown of Vancouver, WA. As a member of the Pittsfield 2023 A4A Cohort, she's been able to re-engage in her own multimedia art including illustration, textile pattern design, and stained glass work. Chelsea has coached and provided business advice to several top-tier comic creators and large YouTube artists, as well as hundreds of creatives who desired to turn their passion into their business. 

A4A Workshop Offerings: TBD

Coaching Areas: Business growth | Contract negotiation | Digital and community marketing | Branding yourself and your art

CHRISTINE BROWN

Christine Brown is a multidisciplinary artist who works with textiles, paint, and digital/graphic media. She makes and sells handmade baby accessories, quilts, pillows, and other items through her business, Fawn. Christine credits her sewing skills to the local 4H club, where community members opened their homes to her and where she was able to learn a skill she has enjoyed over her lifetime. That experience led to her commitment to teaching sewing to the next generation of artists through private lessons and workshops. Christine studied art education at Fitchburg State University, and her work has been featured in ArtsWorcester’s “The Little One” exhibition.

A4A Workshop Offerings: Artists U (Artist co-Leader)

Cliff Notez

Award-winning multimedia artist Cliff Notez seamlessly manifests a mix of hip hop, jazz, folk, soul and R&B into music that reveals the repercussions of trauma, exposes the realities of the Black experience, and shares an intimate journey towards healing. Cliff Notez’s work has caught the attention of The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. They performed at Boston Calling Music Festival in 2022 and have previously shared the stage with Ja Rule and Gym Class Heroes. They are also the founder of digital media company HipStory. With over 11 Boston Music Award nominations and winner of “Song of the Year” in 2020 and “Best New Artist” in 2018, Cliff Notez continues to be a central figure of the Boston arts’ scene.

Coaching Areas: Careers in music/performance

Christina Balch

Christina Balch (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist, producer, and technologist. Christina regularly exhibits her art work in the Boston and New England area, and has also exhibited nationally and globally. Curatorial projects include two co-curated exhibitions about artist representations called “AVATARS” and a show called “Performing the Home” that explored public/private performances in a home-based gallery. Christina is part of the artist collective FeministFuturist, which recently won an inaugural Collective Futures Fund Sustaining Practice grant. Christina works as an executive digital producer and digital marketing consultant for small businesses, artists, advertising agencies, and corporations. In marketing work, she mainly manages and designs website projects big and small, and pays special attention to user experience and business goals. Christina is based in Western Massachusetts and a Southern California native.

A4A Workshop Offerings: “Make Your Website Work for You”

Coaching Areas: Website strategy & design

CYBER PR MUSIC

Cyber PR Music is an artist development, social media & content strategy firm serving musicians and music-related brands. Based in Western MA, Cyber PR just celebrated 25 years of executing digital PR campaigns and advising musicians on how to create online influence and release impactful projects. Cyber PR founder Ariel Hyatt has spoken in 12 countries to over 100,000 entrepreneurs and is the author of five bestselling books on social media, marketing, and crowdfunding, including her most recent release, “The Ultimate Guide to Music Publicity” which went to number one on Amazon in the Music Business category.

Workshop Offerings: “The Ultimate Guide to Artist Publicity”

Coaching Areas: Careers in Music | Marketing/publicity for musicians

DANIEL CALLAHAN

Daniel Callahan is a multimedia artist, filmmaker and designer. Merging painting, digital photography, film, music, writing and performance, Daniel works to craft immersive experiences incorporating story, ritual, and the human form to explore aspects of resilience and mysticism. He is best known for his painterly technique of MassQing - a ritual painting of the face used to reveal rather than conceal one’s inner essence - and has been featured at the Museum of Fine Arts, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Queens Museum, as well as in publications such as Believer Magazine, The Bay State Banner, and Words Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and Emerson College, Daniel is a recipient of the Donor Circle for the Arts Grant and the New England Foundation for the Arts Creative City Grant.

Workshop Offerings: “Staying Authentic While Marketing Your Work”

Coaching Areas: Marketing | Creative entrepreneurship | Careers in film and interdisciplinary arts

Daniel Park

Daniel Park is a queer, bi-racial, theatre and performance artist, movement facilitator, and organizer for racial and labor justice the cultural sector. Through all of the above, his work brings people together to understand and experiment with their individual and mutual roles in bringing about the liberation of all people. Since moving to Philadelphia in 2014 Daniel has become a leader for radical thought in the local creative ecosystem and a trusted national source for guidance on the intersection between cooperatives and the arts. Daniel has self-produced multiple major works, co-founded the worker cooperative Obvious Agency (www.obvious-agency.com), created commissions for institutions such as the Barnes Foundation and Moore College of Art and Design, and taught anti-oppressive creation methodology at the University of the Arts. He was a recipient of the 2022 Art Works Grant from the Philadelphia Foundation and Forman Arts Initiative. Daniel has provided his services as a facilitator and consultant nationally with organizations such as Creatives Rebuild New York, The PA Governor’s Commission on Asian American Affairs, ArtPlace America, and many others. Daniel was also instrumental as an organizer and recruiter for Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists, a community group that brings together folks of pan-Asian descent involved in the performing arts.

Workshop Offerings:

• “Taking Collective Action to Build Community and Fight Racism”

• “An Introduction to Cooperatives in the Arts”

Coaching Areas: Project management | Conflict management and self-advocacy | Cooperatives | Keeping one’s personal and political values alive in one’s work

Doctora Xingona Diana Alvarez

Doctora Xingona's ancestors bloom in her/their voice. Their songs roar an otherworldly fire against oppression, exalt queer love and liberation, and create a gripping atmosphere for healing. An expansive multimedia artist and educator, Doctora Xingona's music, poetry, performances, films, and gatherings center transcendence, kinship, and the co-liberation and nourishment of queer and trans artists of color. Doctora Xingona is the creator/composer behind Quiero Volver: A Xicanx Ritual Opera, a multimedia living performance altar for queer and trans artists of color to convene and manifest futures. Quiero Volver was awarded the Public Art for Spatial Justice Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts in 2020 and is supported by Massachusetts Local Cultural Council Grants in 2022. Funds raised by Quiero Volver performances support the BridgeSong Fund, an emergency relief program for women, nonbinary, and trans musicians of color founded by Doctora Xingona in collaboration with the Institute for the Musical Arts (Goshen, MA). Doctora Xingona released their debut album, Ser Artista, produced by Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist Seth Glier, in December 2021.

Workshop Offerings: “Radiant Thriving: Bold Writing for Boundless Artists”

Frances Cathryn

Frances Cathryn is a writer and editor who combines archival research, media theory, and social design to recontextualize American cultural narratives. She writes cultural criticism on topics ranging from the myth of American exceptionalism to marginalized historical landscapes for such publications as Frieze, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ARTnews, the Brooklyn Rail, and Social Text journal. She has presented her work at the Yale School of Art, NYU ITP, and the Rhode Island School of Design, among others. In 2021–22, Frances was part of New Inc. at the New Museum, working in the Future Memory track to develop an online archival project that challenges western intellectual traditions in cultural institutions. She currently manages editorial projects at Forge Project, a Native-led arts and education initiative working to upend political and social systems formed through generations of settler colonialism, where she coordinates publications, advises writers-in-residence, and in fall 2022 will launch a digital-first journal.

Coaching Areas: Artist writing (statements, bios) | Grant applications | Editorial strategy | Publishing and mass media

Francesca Olsen

Francesca Olsen is a professional writer and communications consultant who lives in the Berkshires. She works full-time as creative and brand strategy manager at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, works with select clients on strategic communications, and writes a monthly food column and regular features for New England newspapers. Francesca also runs No Aesthetic Quilts and Vintage, a small business focusing on custom sewing and curated vintage, and is a member of the band House Sparrow. She is an alum of A4A’s North Adams Project.

Workshop Offerings:

• “The Essentials of Digital Marketing”

• “Instagram Basics: Build a Following, Increase Engagement, and Understand Analytics”

Coaching Areas: Marketing | Social media | Website design

Hadassah DamiEn

Hadassah Damien is an anticapitalist finance educator, design strategist and facilitator, award-winning LGBTQ+ artist, and longtime entrepreneur and business owner. She works with solo businesses, startups, social impact cohorts, fiscal sponsors, and teams of people who want to solve financial sustainability problems in ways that are human-centered and values-driven. From participatory budgeting to DIY sliding-scale tours to traditional banking, she’s worked on the ways money can work better for people -- and offers strategic approaches to her Ride Free Fearless Money readers and clients.

Workshop Offering: “Creating a Sustainable Financial Ecosystem as an Artist”

Coaching Areas: Personal Finances | Financial Goal Setting

HAN CAO

Han Cao is a self-taught artist currently living in Southern California. She uses embroidery to create new narratives for long-forgotten photographs and postcards found at flea markets and antique shops from around the world. Her art combines fibers of embroidery thread with the paper fibers of each photograph to connect with the fibers of our own being – as the added dimension of each work challenges our self-identity and personal connection with unfamiliar people and places.

Coaching Areas: Online sales | Social media marketing

HAUS x SCHOOL

The School of Embodied Praxis (Chicago, IL) + The Haus of Glitter Dance Company (Providence, RI) collaborate in public programs to weave The Haus of Glitter’s intersectional practice of creative pedagogy, cultural preservation, and decolonization strategy with The School of Embodied Praxis’ practices of ritual, ceremony, and spiritual care. As The Haus of Glitter rehearses for the revolution, The School of Embodied Praxis holds space for us, particularly for BIPOC Womxn + Femmes, to deepen the quality of our Rest, creative intuition, and embodiment practices. The Haus of Glitter is a Dance Company + Performance Lab + Preservation Society that works to shift the energetic center of the universe towards care, healing, justice and liberation. The School of Embodied Praxis is an ecosystem of rituals + practices, visual projects, multimedia lectures, and participatory experiences that propose a future beyond the colonized institution of schooling.

Workshop Offerings:

• “Decolonizing Creative Practice: Defensiveness”

• “Decolonizing Creative Practice: Perfectionism”

• “Decolonizing Creative Practice: Urgency”

Ilana Harris-Babou

Ilana Harris- Babou’s work is interdisciplinary; spanning sculpture and installation, and grounded in video. She speaks the aspirational language of consumer culture and uses humor as a means to digest painful realities. Her work confronts the contradictions of the American Dream: the ever unreliable notion that hard work will lead to upward mobility and economic freedom. She has exhibited throughout the US and Europe, with solo exhibitions at The Museum of Arts & Design, Larrie, 80WSE, and HESSE FLATOW in New York. Other venues include Abrons Art Center, the Jewish Museum, SculptureCenter, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the De Young Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has been reviewed in the New Yorker, Artforum, and Art in America, among others. She holds an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University, and a BA in Art from Yale University. Ilana is a 2019 graduate of A4A’s Capacity-Building Grant Program.

Coaching Areas: Careers in visual art

Jessica Burko

One of A4A’s longest-running trainers with a workshop on marketing for visual artists, Jessica Burko has been an exhibiting artist since 1985 and has displayed work in solo and group shows throughout the United States. Burko is originally from Philadelphia and currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA in Imaging Arts and Science from Rochester Institute of Technology. In addition to being a practicing artist, Burko is the Creative Director at the Photographic Resource Center, Cambridge, MA. She is also an independent curator with more than thirty exhibitions produced since 2000, and her professional background includes the position of Gallery Director at Stonehill College from 2000-06, from 2007-14 she held the position of Executive Director of the artist collective Boston Handmade, and from 2016 to 2019 she was the Marketing Director at Kingston Gallery. Burko's work in the arts community allows her to foster and strengthen connections between working artrepreneurs. She supports artists in achieving their creative and professional goals through lectures, workshops, and partnerships with organizations such as ArtsWorcester, Worcester, MA, Mass MoCA’s Assets for Artists Program, North Adams, MA, and the South Shore Arts Center, Cohasset, MA.

Workshop Offerings:

• “Find Your Message: Branding & Marketing for Visual Artists”

• “Marketing in A Changed World”

Coaching Areas: Marketing | Social media | Website design

John Vo

John Vo is a working artist who paints to connect to people, and who aims to make art accessible. As the son of Vietnamese refugees, the stories of lost waters have given them many homes. As a part of the Vietnamese diaspora, they draw from their family’s narrative as a poetic understanding of history in development. John’s paintings range from allegorical still lives and landscapes to contemporary portraits. In their studio practice, John is a materialist, sourcing textiles with a story and origin. They are currently engaged in silk and textile painting, begun during a Fulbright fellowship to Vietnam. This has led to explorations in cone denim, Vietnamese silk, and wearable art.

A4A Workshop Offerings: Artists U (Artist co-Leader)

Kristen Becker

Kristen Becker is the Founder of KB Art Strategies, a consultancy providing concrete support to a global network of artists, galleries, non-profits, and arts organizations looking to expand the visibility of their projects and connect with their community. With over two decades of experience forging successful dialogue between seemingly disparate sectors of the art world, she is dedicated to long-term relationship cultivation and strategies that amplify the work of contemporary artists. Prior to KB Art Strategies, Kristen served as the Director of Museum Engagement for Marianne Boesky Gallery, was Director at Luhring Augustine, and held positions at L+M Arts and Gorney Bravin + Lee. She was the Director of Cultural Partnerships for the 2020 nonpartisan Plan Your Vote campaign, held a role on the Steering Committee of the Professional Organization for Women in the Arts from 2016-2019, and has advised the Association of Art Museum Curators.

Workshop Offerings: “Fostering Relationships w/ Galleries and Museums”

Coaching Areas: Careers in fine art

Laura Baring-Gould

Sculptor Laura Baring-Gould’s practice includes award-winning installations, public artworks, and small bronzes sold in galleries, juried shows, and through private commissions. Her permanent, public installations can be found throughout the Boston area, including in the Tower Hill Botanic Garden, the City of Cambridge, and Edward Everett Square in Dorchester. She has taught numerous workshops with A4A since 2018. She is also an alumna of the A4A Capacity-Building Grant Program, which makes Laura uniquely skilled to help current grantees with designing business plans and budgets best suited to their needs and the grant program’s requirements.

Workshop Offerings:

• “Making a Plan in a Time of Uncertainty”

• Artists U (Artist co-Leader)

Coaching Areas: Strategic planning | Creative entrepreneurship | Careers in fine craft

LAURA CHRISTENSEN

Visual artist Laura Christensen works with vintage photographs, paint, thread, and wood to create seamless, yet unexpected combinations of past and present, object and image. Her artwork has been featured in Kidspace at MASS MoCA, The Art Complex Museum, The Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum, Bennington Museum, among other places. Laura’s awards include a Finalist Award from the Artist Fellowship Program of the Mass Cultural Council, a MASS MoCA’s “Assets for Artists” Professional Development Grant, and two A.R.T. Grants, a fund of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. Her anthology project THEN AGAIN was successfully funded by 200+ backers pledging more than $30,000 on Kickstarter in 2019. Since then Laura has helped several artists, businesses, and nonprofits to crowdfund their own projects.

Workshop Offerings: “Crowdfunding for Artist Projects”

Coaching Areas: Crowdfunding

Leslie Anne condon

Leslie Anne Condon (she/her) is a Boston-area artist-scholar, independent curator, public speaker, and seasoned arts administrative professional. Leslie's work has been featured at venues around the country, including the Rubin-Frankel Gallery at Boston University, Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia, the Residency Project through MotorLA in Los Angeles, and VisArts in Rockville, Maryland. She has served as the Hopkinton Center for the Arts' inaugural Kris Waldman Curator-in-Residence and as a guest speaker for various organizations, including the AIDS Action and Fenway Health Activist Academy’s Getting to Zero MA Coalition, The Dying Year, Phillips Academy, Creatives of Color Boston, and the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia, PA. Her past curatorial projects include New Narratives and Call and Response: Illustration in Uncertain Times for Pao Arts Center, and Visions/Voices for the Rose Kennedy Greenway. She views her cultural work, including her artmaking, scholarship, curation, and community organizing, as a means to support and advocate for the BIPOC community. Leslie earned her postbaccalaureate in Fine Art 3D from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2011, and is currently an MA student at RISD, pursuing a degree in Global Arts and Cultures. She is also a Graduate Student Lecturer at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston for the 2023/4 academic year. 

Coaching Areas: Strategic planning | Project management | Grant writing | Artist writing

lillie j. harris

Lillie J. Harris (they/she) is a cartoonist, writer and illustrator from Clinton, Maryland. Tension and empathy are notable themes throughout Lillie’s artwork, as well as theology, horror, and not “punching down". Their self-published graphic novel, Wilderness, debuted in 2021 and is currently circulating in bookshops and through online distributors. Most recently, Lillie has worked as a narrative designer for Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast (2023), a Tabletop role-playing game published by Possum Creek Games. They were also an essayist for Black Josei Press’ Gladiolus Magazine (2023), and a comics contributor to the online literary magazine smoke and mold (2023). Their comics and illustrations have been published in The New Yorker, Burlington City Arts Gallery, and The Vermont Folklife Center's graphic novel Turner Family Stories.

Coaching areas: Careers in illustration / Artists voice / Character development / Narrative design / Page Composition

Lucas Baisch

Lucas Baisch (he/him) is a Guatemalan-Mexican-American playwright and artist from San Francisco. His work has been read and developed at The Goodman Theatre, The NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights' Workshop, Chicago Dramatists, SF Playground, and elsewhere. Lucas is a recipient of a Steinberg Playwright Award, the Princess Grace Award in Playwriting, the Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting award, and the Kennedy Center's KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award. He was most recently a Jerome Fellow at The Playwrights' Center and the Princess Grace Fellow at New Dramatists. Lucas has taught writing at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, Macalester College, and as a teaching artist through Chicago Public Schools. Outside of writing for theatre, his artwork has been presented at Elsewhere Museum, the Electronic Literature Organization, gallery no one, and the RISD Museum. He has held residencies through ACRE, Elsewhere Museum, the Goodman Theatre's 2016-17 Playwrights Unit, as a 2018 Lambda Literary Playwriting Fellow, and Millay Arts, and the Wurlitzer Foundation.

Coaching Areas: Careers in playwriting | Curriculum development | Grant writing

Workshop Offerings: “Financial Well-Being Through Interdependence”

Maria Finkelmeier

Maria Finkelmeier is a percussionist, composer, public artist, educator, and arts entrepreneur. She’s created entire works from found, non-traditional sounds, and transformed iconic structures into percussive playgrounds. She’s been commissioned by the Esplanade Association, National Parks Service, BLINK Cincinnati, TEDx Cambridge, New Gallery Concert Series, i = u festival, Illuminus Festival, Boston Center for the Arts, Celebrity Series of Boston, and the Outside the Box Festival. Named a "one-woman dynamo" by the Boston Globe, she has founded and directed numerous ventures, including MF Dynamics, Kadence Arts, Make Music Boston, Quartet Kalos, Masary Studios, and Ensemble Evolution. She is an Associate Professor at Berklee College in Creative Entrepreneurship and is a Yamaha Performing Artist.

Coaching Areas: Careers in music & performance | Creative entrepreneurship | Project management

Mariona Lloreta

Mariona Lloreta is a Mediterranean-American cultural producer, interdisciplinary artist, and brand strategist working internationally in film, painting, dance and education with a life-long commitment to social and racial justice through art and narrative change. Recent projects include writing, directing and producing multidisciplinary production “Altars” which spotlighted extraordinary, local BIPOC artists in Boston and which highlighted each artist’s unique response to racial injustice in the United States. Mariona's previous films, which she wrote, directed, filmed and produced won Best Experimental Film Awards and Best Cinematography at Oscar-Qualifying festivals in the United States and Canada and were selected by dozens of film festivals around the world. Mariona also edited award-winning feature film "The Ghost and the House of Truth" (2019) in South Africa and directed "In the absence of things," a short experimental film starring Sony Music artist Somi. She has directed and produced several documentary films, including "ReSignifications", commissioned by New York University, "Living Together," commissioned by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston and "The Lagos Music Salon" in Nigeria. 

Coaching areas [Trilingual in Spanish, Portuguese, and English]: Careers in film and interdisciplinary arts | Creative entrepreneurship | Branding | Grant writing

marisol foumakoye

A Connecticut-based creator with a background in mental health and addiction services, Marisol Foumakoye has blended her multi-passionate skills from songwriting, videography, production, and online marketing over the past 15 years, bringing about a perfect marriage to build and create platforms for creative artists. In 2018 she launched an empowerment and business skills kit for songwriters called Top Secret Songwriter. Marisol is also a certified life coach, self-published author and holds a Masters of Psychology from Southern Connecticut State. She currently works for the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice Research at Yale..

Workshop Offerings:

• “What’s My Wellness Plan? Starting the Process to Healthier Habits”

MAYA AZUCENA

Maya Azucena, a magnetically inspirational woman, is known for making music that uplifts the soul. Among several awards for her music and humanitarian outreach, Azucena garnered a Grammy Certificate for contributing her 4-octave range and soul-stylings to a feature performance with Stephen Marley on Best Reggae Album of the Year, “Mind Control.” Critically acclaimed, Brooklyn-native Maya is an avid independent touring artist and songwriter performing globally. Recent concerts include a 17-country tour of Europe in February 2019; Java Jazz Fest (Indonesia), CapeTown Jazz Fest (South Africa), Port Au Prince International Jazz Fest (Haiti), Rio Das Ostras Blues & Jazz Fest (Brazil), Moscow International House of Music (Russia), Pula Arena (Croatia), Delhi International Arts Festival (India), Hollywood Bowl (Los Angeles), Blue Note Hawaii, Blue Note New York, and Essence Fest in New Orleans alongside the likes of Beyonce, Jill Scott and Maxwell.

Workshop Offerings: “The Ultimate Guide to Artist Publicity”

MEL Taing

Mel Taing is a Boston-based Cambodian American photographer. Specializing in creative portraiture, exhibition documentation and events, Mel seeks to celebrate the vibrance, radiance and joy of the intersecting communities in her life. As an artist, Mel is interested in exploring themes of food and identity, intergenerational healing, and utilizing vibrant, surreal color spaces to create new narratives for QTDBIPOC+ folx to be in their fullness. When Mel isn't photographing people, she documents exhibitions at fine arts institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, MIT List Visual Arts Center, the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and more. Beyond the camera, she is deeply interested in increasing cultural equity within the arts and culture sector of Boston through volunteerism in public higher ed and collaborating with community-centered organizations fighting for social justice.

When it comes to career coaching, Mel is interested in sharing her experience and knowledge on the following: how to build a sustainable freelance business, how to document your artworks, what to look out for when working with photographers to capture your event/artworks/portrait! Mel is especially excited to help new and emerging photographers create their best work and access abundance in their practice.

Coaching Areas: Careers in photography | Creative entrepreneurship | Artwork documentation

Mercedes Jelinek

Mercedes Jelinek is an American artist working in Italy and NYC. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the State University of New York at Purchase and an MFA from Louisiana State University. She recently completed the three-year residency at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at Blowing Rock Art and History Museum and the Cassilhaus Gallery in North Carolina; SoHo Photo Gallery, Cuchifritos Gallery, Littlefield Gallery, and Gallery MC in New York; Page Bond Gallery in Virginia; the Satellite Art Show at Art Basal Miami; 30-under-30 Exhibition at Vermont Center for Photography; MPLS Photo Center in Minnesota; Midwest Center for Photography Exhibition at the Center Gallery in Kentucky. Mercedes' publications have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, Library of Congress, Aperture Foundation and the Getty Institute collections. She is also on the board of Blue Sky Gallery in Portland.

Workshop Offerings: “Photographing Your Artwork”

Michaela Pilar Brown

Michaela Pilar Brown (Columbia, SC) is an image and object maker, a multi-disciplinary artist using photography, installation and performance. She studied sculpture and art history at Howard University. Brown’s installations, collage and photographs address issues attendant to the black body. She uses nontraditional materials and their juxtaposition to each other, and/or dissimilar objects to make statements about the body and its relationship to larger cultural themes of age, gender, race, sexuality, history, and violence. Her work considers memory, myth, ritual, desire and the spaces the body occupies within these vignettes. Brown is the 2018 grand prize winner of Artfields juried art competition. She is a 2018 inaugural resident artist of the Volcanic Residency, Whakatane Museum, Whakatane, New Zealand. She was has attended many residencies around the world and her work can be found in private and public museum collections in the United States. She is the Executive Director of 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, South Carolina., where she has served since 2020.

A4A Workshop Offerings: Artists U cohort program

NANCY MARKS

Nancy Marks is a public health activist, community organizer, and visual artist who has been making art for over 25 years. In 2014, she launched The Intimacy of Memory, an initiative exploring grief and loss through art. In 2016, she co-founded The Opioid Project: Changing Perceptions through Art and Storytelling as a way to weave the strands of art, healing and community change. Nancy also leads art-making sessions—online and in-person—in Memory Cafes for people living with dementia. As a mixed-media artist with an extensive background in painting, printmaking and paper-making, Nancy’s current work explores different narratives: How does constructed space separate or bring people together? What makes a community and what tears it apart? This interest in the power of place can be traced back to her New York roots. She currently lives in the Boston area.

Workshop Offerings: “Social Practice Art: Toward Individual Healing, Community Dialogue and Social Change”

Coaching Areas: Social practice art | Community engagement and advocacy

Ngoc-Tran Vu

Ngoc-Tran Vu (she/her) is a 1.5-generation Vietnamese multimedia artist and organizer whose socially engaged practice draws from her experience as a cultural strategist, educator, and lightworker. Her work evokes discourse of familial ties, memories and rituals amongst themes of social justice and intersectionality. Previously, Tran worked at Silkroad to support performing global musicians through social impact and AIR (Association of Independents in Radio) to advocate for freelance audio producers in mission-driven storytelling. Most recently, she taught in Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston as an adjunct faculty. Tran works across borders and is grounded in Boston's Dorchester community. @TranVuArts

Workshop Offerings:

• “Protecting Our Practice and Creative Self”

• “Homeownership for Artists”

• “Let's Get Social: Promoting Your Work Online”

• “Creative Resiliency in Uncertain Times”

• Artists U (Artist co-Leader)

Coaching Areas: Homeownership pathways | Financial literacy | Protecting your practice | Strategic planning & organizing | Networking with Media/Press | Fundraising | Negotiations

SARAH MARCUS

Sarah Marcus is a Northampton-based theater artist, educator, producer, and mother. In 2019 she co-founded Play Incubation Collective (PIC), a local launchpad for new theatrical works. She also directs the Youth Performance Festival, a yearly free opportunity for youth artists to create original performance pieces under the guidance of mentor artists. Her mission across all her work is to widen the canon of stories we experience, and celebrate the power of artistic community. Sarah has performed locally in PIC’s Piedmont Plays, Northampton's 24-hour play festival and Greenfield's Double Take Fringe Festival. Outside of Western Mass, she has created and performed work at the Emerging Artists Theatre NYC, Cleveland Public Theatre, NY International Fringe Festival, and HERE Arts Center, among others.

Workshop Offerings: Artists U (Artist co-Leader)

Shey ‘Rí Acu’ Rivera Ríos

Shey ‘Rí Acu’ Rivera Ríos is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker, born and raised in Borikén/Puerto Rico and rooted in Providence, RI, land of Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples. Rivera has 14 years of experience in the arts and culture sector, interweaving community development, urban planning, and racial equity. Rivera is Creative Catalyst Director of One Square World, a racial and environmental justice organization that builds liberatory structures alongside communities. Rivera is also the founder of Studio Loba, a storytelling lab for artistic projects that support social change. Past leadership roles include: Director of Inclusive Regional Development at MIT CoLab, Dept of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT. And Artistic and Co-Director of AS220, a renowned arts organization and creative incubator in Providence, RI. Rivera has had civic roles in Providence and beyond for over a decade. Rivera was one of three key artist facilitators for PVDx2031: A Cultural Plan for Culture Shift, the City of Providence's new Cultural Plan. As an artist and practitioner, Rivera is known for creating futurist community projects and theatrical productions, including: Antigonx (2022), MoralDocs (2021), and Fire Flowers and a Time Machine (2020).

Coaching Areas [Bilingual in Spanish and English]: Ethical Community Partnerships for Artistic Projects | Managing Your Project Grant | Resourcing Strategies for Creative Projects (available in fall 2023)

Silvia Lopez Chavez

Dominican-American Silvia López Chavez is a Boston, community-based artist and a frequent collaborator with urban planners, architects, non-profits, and activists. She believes in the power of the creative process as an agent for positive change and uses art as a vehicle for connection. Her work has received recognition through grants, residencies, and commissions including New England Foundation for the Arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Harvard University, Boston Children’s Hospital, Punto Urban Art Museum, Vermont Studio Center, and Google. Silvia is a 2019 graduate of A4A’s Capacity-Building Grant Program.  

Coaching Areas: Careers in public art

Todd Reynolds

Todd Reynolds is known as a creative classical violinist who has enjoyed a multi-faceted career in New York City for the past 30 years. Unconfined by genre or style, he has collaborated with everyone from Yo-Yo Ma to Steve Reich and has played with pop artists like Joe Jackson, Todd Rundgren and Bruce Springsteen, with stints as concertmaster on Broadway and educational residencies around the world. In North Adams, his chosen home, he produces and publishes his own blend of electronic and acoustic music out of his own studio. As an educator, he is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, The New School, NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, and Bang on a Can Summer Institute at Mass MoCA. In 2020, he and his partner, Isabelle Holmes, launched ‘Amplify This’ - an online academy supporting clients in their pursuits around personal vision and growth as well as offering skills in technological and career expansion, offering one-on-one mentoring and coaching as well as longer group programs with exposure to featured guest artists, and personalized mindset, financial, and career coaching.

Coaching Areas: Careers and collaboration in music | Album self-production | Finding one’s authentic path in a music career

Yara Liceaga-Rojas

Yara Liceaga Rojas, M.A., is a queer, Afro-Caribbean mother, writer/poet, performer, cultural manager, and educator, born in Puerto Rico, who currently resides in the Greater Boston area. Yara is a Letras Boricuas Fellow (2021); Boston Neighborhood Fellow (2021-2023); and Brother Thomas Fellow (2019). She has been developing her consulting career in arts management and grant writing in Massachusetts and Puerto Rico, servicing artists, collectives, art businesses, and other entities. Yara has authored 5 books and has been the lead artist/curator of the ongoing projects: Poetry Is Busy; El Despojo Project; Acentos espesos/Thick Accents, and most recently Encarnar/Embody. She holds a Master’s Degree in Arts Administration from the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras.

Workshop Offerings:

• “The Basics of Building a Grant”

• Artists U (Artist co-Leader)

Coaching Areas [Bilingual in Spanish and English]: Grants and fundraising | Careers in writing | DIY publishing

yasmine ameli

Yasmine Ameli (she/her) is an Iranian American poet and essayist whose writing has appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, The Sun, the Southern Review, and elsewhere. A fellow A4A grantee, she coaches creative writers on the business of thriving as an artist.

Workshop Offerings: “Submitting to Literary Markets & Magazines”